George Duke wrote on Mon, Oct 29, 2007 04:22 PM UTC:
Jeremy Good points out why Omega Chess cannot work well with its two new
pieces on 8x10, or any 8-ranked operation. Simply its 'Wizard', with the
Camel leap as half its move modality, becomes overbearing; just try it
out and see JGood is right. So, the Poor yet CVPage-Recognized game Omega
is stuck with its big awkward board(s). Bison was a problemist's creation
of 1970's never incorporated into a CV as such. The late David
Pritchard's 'Encyclopedia of Chess Variants' has several uses of triple-compound leaper Knight+Camel+Zebra earlier on large boards. [ECV also shows a number of examples of Knight+Camel and Knight+Zebra in CVs' pieces] Falcon can be thought of as the first use of a Bison in a CV, to begin to understand Falcon. Quickly one realizes that on 8x10, a full-powered Bison is worse than Wizard in dictating strategy, although Queen of course still has the highest point value. By 10x10 Bison is as nice a piece as a Falcon. Any popular chesses or FIDE forms are unlikely to go to 10x10, or even approaching it at 9x10 or 9x11, in the 21st Century. After all, the standard has been 64 squares for 1400 years(before even time of The Prophet Mohammed).